Blog Archives

Sick of hearing about Charlie Sheen’s tiger blood or the political gaffe du jour? This simple DIY project will mute your TV whenever it starts talking about a celebrity or subject you’ve heard enough of. More »

Sick of hearing about Charlie Sheen’s tiger blood or the political gaffe du jour? This simple DIY project will mute your TV whenever it starts talking about a celebrity or subject you’ve heard enough of. More »

If you’ve been sitting around all week wondering how you could combine smoke, speakers, and a love of novel physics experiments into an excuse to tinker in your workshop this weekend, building a smoke-shooting vortex cannon should cover everything nicely. More »

If you were impressed with the swanky recycled wine bottle cups we shared with you, but had trouble cutting the bottles cleanly, you’ll definitely want to check out this guide to getting perfect cuts. More »

If you’ve been dreaming of having a computer in your kitchen but don’t like the idea of hanging it from a cabinet or having it clutter up the counter, this guide can help you build a sleek in-wall computer.

Putting a computer in your kitchen and having it look natural and part of the design is a big challenge. Ryan’s wife had been bugging him to put a computer in the kitchen so she could use it to access the internet, manage recipes, generate shopping lists and so on. She also had a pretty tall order when it came to the machine, she wanted it to be discrete, have a touch screen, be internet-enabled, with wires hidden and equipped with a barcode scanner for her to scan products and manage a kitchen database. Not dissuaded by such an ambitious list, Ryan set to work and built an in-wall computer that looks like it was designed and installed by a professional.

The build sports a touch screen, runs Windows XP with an interface cloned from the iPhone for easy finger-based navigation and use, and can do everything from displaying the weather to organizing the pantry. You can check out his build guide for detailed information including how he created the iPhone interface from scratch using the active desktop feature in Windows and coding a custom web page using icons he made and linking them to online services and software on the computer.

In the above photo Melinda, an Apartment Therapy reader, put rope lights behind her headboard to cast a warm glow up the wall and provide subdued bedroom lighting. While rope lights have a pleasant warm color to them to begin with, the deep red color of the walls certainly doesn’t hurt.

Rope lights can also be placed above cabinets for soft down-lighting or beneath furniture for a diffused floor-level light. If you’re looking for interesting new lighting ideas, take a stroll through our Featured Workspaces to find quite a variety of novel ways for using subtle—and not so subtle!—lighting.

Have your own favorite way for varying and enhancing the lighting in your home or office? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

Baking cookies in your oven is fine and all, but if you want to turn out some tasty cookies in a very short time, consider turning to your trusty waffle iron. Turns out you’re only 90 seconds away from crispy, chewy, cookie-goodness.

Bananas are a good source of potassium, but turns out the peels can do more than just store the fruit. Apartment Therapy outlines seven ways to put used peels to work, including removal of those inconvenient splinters. Photo by keepon.

Sooth headaches? Clean razors? Kill bees? Vodka is handy for all sorts of uses besides the traditional one. The clear and high-proof alcohol can be used for all manner of tricks. Photo by Carsten Lorentzen.

The new iMacs, and similar all-in-one LCD desktop systems, make for a mostly cordless computing experience. Using two pieces of IKEA furniture meant for laptops and modems, you can hide the remaining wires and up the elegance.

As if the sheer magnetism aspect of magnets wasn’t magical enough, weblog Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories points out 17 very cool tricks that put your magnets to great use. For starters, a strong magnet can be the perfect tool to remove batteries from the grips of a stubborn spring.

We’ve heard that Vicks VapoRub can cure toenail fungus before (it’s also helpful when you’ve got a cold!), but the New York Times recently put it to the test. The results: The thyme in VapoRub can in fact do the job.

We’ve all been there at some point: You’ve got a perfectly functional Ethernet cord that somewhere along the line had its tab broken off. Don’t buy a new one or re-terminate the cord. Fix it with zip ties.

If a full-sized charging station is overkill for your single cellphone or iPod, try this smaller gadget cradle that mounts neatly on a wall outlet. Craft blog Zakka Life put together a simple tutorial for making a cradle that's perfect for single, regularly-charged items—the kinds of things you dump out of your pockets upon returning home.

Inspired by a tutorial we posted last year, we decided to make our own DIY sun jars. The trendy summer time lighting accessory retails for $30+ but we were able to make ours for around $10 each. The sun jars proved to be our most popular non-computer DIY of the entire year and readers shared their own creations with us.

Building your own computer is a great way to get exactly what you want, the way you want it, without being constrained by the limits and high-prices of mass produced computers. We showed you how to build a computer from start to finish and have fun doing it.

What’s standing between you and some office mayhem? Certainly not a lack of Sharpie markers and keyboard dusting spray. Combine the two with this fun DIY project and you’ve got one of the most awesome pieces of office-machinery we’ve ever featured.

You need to be properly erasing your physical media: all the time, every time. Our guide will show you how to get the job done and done right whether you use software to scrub your disks or you send them to the great data mine in the sky with a 21-gun salute.

Why settle for a digital picture frame when, in the same wall space, you could mount an entirely functional computer/slideshow player/TV tuner? One Lifehacker reader turned an old laptop into a super-charged digital frame.

We’ve always been keen on DIY laptop stands, but reader Aaron Kravitz—inspired by an attractive $50 stand—went above and beyond, creating one of the most attractive DIY laptop stands we've featured to date.

We’ve shown you how to make an air conditioner (even for as low as $30), but what if you wanted something you can put in your car and take with you? While it’s no substitute for a fully-charged and factory-fresh AC system, it’ll keep you cool.

Who hasn’t dreamed of having a mystery-story-style secret passageway? While a trick bookshelf is pretty awesome in itself, this secret passage hides a home office with clever style. One industrious Lifehacker reader and his girlfriend had grown tired of seeing their office from their living space, so they hid it behind a wall of books.

You’ve ripped a movie on your laptop, and now want it on that fancy new home theater PC next to your TV. If you’ve got the time, wiring your house with Cat-5e cable could make transfer times a distant memory.

We’re all about creative cable management here at Lifehacker, so we were instantly drawn to reader Seandavid010‘s rain-gutter cable management setup. He was awesome enough to send detailed photos and step by step instructions to help other readers recreate his setup.

Suppose you were inspired by the cheap DIY home pizza oven—but weren't so sure your home insurance would cover oven modifications. It's time to build a safer, more eye-pleasing oven, and we've got a thorough guide.

Two years ago we highlighted how to crack a Master combination padlock for those of you who may have lost the combination to your bulletproof lock; now designer Mark Campos has turned the tried-and-true instructions into an easier-to-follow visual guide.

Instead of storing your books upright on top of the shelf, the inverted bookshelf holds all of your books in place using elastic webbing so you can hang them below the shelf—all the while allowing you to still take them out and put them back on as needed.

A few years ago, blogger Jimmie Rodgers’s camera was stolen while volunteering in an impoverished Brazilian community, so he did what any sane person would do: He bought a new camera and made it ugly. With his uglified camera, Rodgers was able to snap pictures freely during the rest of his trip without worrying too much that his ostensibly crappy camera would end up stolen.

DeviceGuru blogger Rick Lehrbaum, inspired by the cheaper set-top boxes, made his own higher-powered “BoxeeBox” for the free, open-source media center. He posted all the parts, the how-to details, and lots of pictures.

Have a favorite DIY from 2009 that wasn’t highlighted here? Sound off in the comments with a link to your favorite project. Want to see more popular DIY guides courtesy of the ghost of Lifehacker past? Check out our huge DIY guide roundup from 2008.

It isn’t hard to make a cheap iPhone or iPod stand, but if you’re looking for a cheap stand that won’t scratch your iPhone, will hold it solidly, and is extremely skinny and portable, this one is tough to beat.

The stand in question is simply a piece of acrylic that has been cut like an easel back with a small slot to place the charging cable. As you can see from the photo, the stand is great for turning your iPhone into an alarm clock or propping it up for a movie in bed. The cut can also be modified to fit just about any flat-screened phone with a screen worth peering at.

Check out the tutorial at the link below for more pictures of the build process. You can also see a version created by Lifehacker reader cyberfux, here.

Test pilot wanted

Looking for people who is interested in auto sport to become a TestFlight pilot for up-coming new release of AR1 iPhone APP.
During the TestFlight you will have access to the latest auto news and content from iPhone.